These paths we take, these decisions we make
by feeisamarshmallow
Summary: "The fact that Veronica Mars is using Juan Diego as a bargaining chip has Eli seeing red in anger." Examining Weevil & Veronica's relationship in season 4, but mostly filling in Weevil's life in the past 15ish years.


**Summary: "The fact that Veronica Mars is using Juan Diego as a bargaining chip has Eli seeing red in anger." Examining Weevil & Veronica's relationship in season 4, but mostly filling in Weevil's life in the past 15ish years.**

* * *

2019

The fact that Veronica Mars is using Juan Diego as a bargaining chip has Eli seeing red in anger. But if he's honest, he has been angry with Veronica far before this moment-Since she came to visit him at Jade's mother's house, and told him off for taking the settlement. This is just a lightning rod. Him and Veronica, they've always had their conflicts, but this one hurts the most. He's sorry that he screwed Keith and Cliff the way he did-He didn't know how to tell them about the settlement, so he didn't, and that was on him. But couldn't Veronica understand that family was everything to him? That he couldn't just throw away the opportunity to try to re-establish his life, pay off his debt, maybe start a new business? For someone so set on being an outsider, she likes to play at being a saviour, at taking the noble path. Well, he's not a noble guy. He's a realistic guy and Neptune's a shitty town, and he's not sorry that he took the path that offered him the most possibility of getting his old life back.

* * *

2014-2018

He doesn't get his old life back though. Instead he slips back into a role he thought he had long since shed.

He holds on to the garage for a few months after the attack, but he's barely able to spend a few hours a week there between his impending trial and his recovery. The 09er business has all but dried up, and it's two months to the date of Celeste's unprompted attack when he boards up the windows and dissolves the business. The hardest part is telling his staff, guys who he knows rely on him for a steady, legit job. They pitch in on the last day and buy him a pack of beer and it makes Eli tear up. He lets them take any of the parts or tools he hasn't managed to sell, and doesn't look back when he locks the door for the last time. The next day he swallows his pride and goes over to Angel's shop and asks him for job. Angel tells him of course, he'll always have a job for his sobrino. And just like that he's back.

And yeah, in a way that's on him too. He might be working a less-than-legal job for Angel, but he's the one who takes Hector up on his offer to stop by his house. It's Eli's first full week working at Angel's yard, and he's still only part-time because of his shoulder, when Hector calls him up and invites him to his barbeque. There's hazy smoke in the air and spanglish flung across the yard between a few of the old PCH, and most of the new, young PCH too. Some guys Eli's still friendly with, others he has barely talked to, but all of them immediately respect him and it feels so good, so opposite to the helplessness he felt in the aftermath of the shooting. He stops by Angel's garage on the way home. Pulls around the deserted lot to a storage room at the back where he keeps his bike. He hasn't been on it since Valentina was born, since he gave up the criminal life, though he hates that term, for the second time. He stands there, looking at his distorted reflection in the chrome for longer than he should, until a far-off gunshot makes him jump.

He supposes he's back to hanging out with Hector and everyone because they're the only ones who get it. Get his anger, get his resignation, get why the only way he can feel in control is to pull out his bike and find justice outside of the law. It's been years, but he fits back in with them as if he's never left. He can't pretend anymore, that he was going to make it in a picket-fence life, a kid, a business, fucking flower gardens in his front yard. Jade urges him to talk about it. The first time she asks, he's just home from the hospital and he tries, but he can't find the words to describe how he's feeling. Anger? Devastation maybe? Mostly he just feels tired and so that's what he tells Jade, and she lets him rest because she's trying to be supportive.

Eventually he tells Jade he thinks she and Valentina should leave. Neptune's not a good place to raise a kid, he says. For a while Jade counters his suggestion, why don't you come too, she asks. But money is running thinner, between legal bills and medical bills and normal everyday bills. More than that, he can't seem to shake the feeling that it's all futile. When he was younger, even when he felt like life had it out for him, he still had a certain unshakable bravado. A feeling that he could make it on his skill and toughness and ability to game the system alone. He doesn't know whether that was a naivety evaporated with age, or blasted out of him by Celeste's gun, but either way it's gone. He did everything right, for once, and it still didn't stop someone from shooting first and asking later. He's supposed to be teaching his daughter manners, to say thank you, and please. He's supposed to teach her that if you act right, the world will treat you right. But he can't. It's an impossible situation, he can't tell the truth and he can't lie. He can't leave them and he can't stay.

Jade and Valentina move back to Pan Valley with her mother. It's a mutual decision, borne as much out of financial sense as it is of Jade's deep suspicion of Eli's bike in the driveway. Her mother was always politely wary of his intentions, and his slide back into the PCH hasn't improved their relationship. Rita Ortiz is a retired schoolteacher. She has the same quiet toughness of her daughter, and a teacher's eye that misses no detail. Rita devoted her life to raising Jade after her husband, Jade's father, died when she was only nine. They used to talk about that, him and Jade, how they both knew the pain of losing a parent. How they never wanted Valentina to have to go through that. Jade and her mother have a closeness Eli could never hope to match, and he never got to feeling entirely comfortable at Rita's house. They speak rapid-fire Spanish to each other that makes him feel self-conscious when he mostly answers them in English, and Rita still eyes his tattoos when she thinks he's not looking.

The move is just supposed to be temporary, and for a while just after the settlement Eli thinks they might be okay. He pays off his debt, puts the rest away for a rainy day, and then takes Jade out for a nice dinner. When he picks her up, she's wearing a simple black dress and little heels and it strikes him that she hasn't had a cause to dress up since the reunion. At first there's an awkward silence in the truck as they drive up the coast, filled with all the things they're not talking about-his bike, and the real reason that key witness rescinded their statement. Then Jade reaches over and fiddles with the radio, landing on a Destiny Child's song. He rolls his eyes, he respects Beyoncé but it's not his kind of music, and she laughs, singing along. For a moment It feels like they're dating again.

Of course, it doesn't stay that way. He never manages to get another garage off the ground. He just doesn't have the same stamina for the long hours it takes to start a new business, not to mention he lost all his 09er when Celeste accused him of assault. Slowly Jade loses patience as he keeps working at Angel's, keeps riding with Hector. Then Angel moves to LA to be with his new girlfriend and Eli becomes the defacto boss of the shop. It's a mutual split in the sense that he understands why Jade can't stay with him, and he thinks, he hopes, that she can understand his decisions too. But it nonetheless hurts. A dull, deep pain like the one in his shoulder that keeps him awake at night.

But no matter their relationship now, he'll always be grateful that Jade came into his life, there'll always be a part of him that loves her. He's never been sure if he really believes in God, but it certainly feels like a divine intervention that led him to Jade.

* * *

2007-2010

He keeps his Hearst job until a crashing economy forces layoffs, and without the pull of the Dean or Veronica, Eli finds himself on the cutting block. He drifts around, enough time passed after Letty's death that he's patched things up with his family. He crashes with his sister, and helps out Angel, extra-legally sourcing enough car parts to save some money on the side. One day he gets cocky and gets caught on his way to lifting a pair of rims. But the cops can't find anything on him, so they only stick him with a trespassing charge. Still, he ends up with minor jail time, and something in him decides that when he gets out, he's going to get out for good, as soon as possible. No more working with Angel. A legit shop. Maybe a few college courses if he can swing it.

Jade sits next to him on the first day of business class at Neptune Community College. She pulls out her notebook and lines up her pen neatly beside, then turns around and introduces herself. It throws him off. He's trying not to act like he feels out of place, even though the room is full of people from every corner of Neptune life—teenagers, parents, even a few people who could be grandparents. Latino, Southeast Asian, Black, White. With no 09ers, it's the least hostile classroom he's ever been in. He's impressed that Jade doesn't seem put off by his tattoos. And she doesn't question the fact that he's taking this class, on his way to earning a business certificate.

She sits next to him every day. She's taking this summer course to finish up her degree in Child Development at Hearst, and so he finds himself telling her that he used to work there. It surprises Eli when she's genuinely interested in his job. Everything about her surprises him in the best way. Her knowledge of 90s rap, for instance, and the calm way she challenges the professor. It takes him a whole month to casually ask her if she wants to get coffee and study together.

He tells her things he never thought he'd give up so easily. He talks about his abuela, reminiscing about her house, her cooking, the way she never let him quit high school. Jade's grandmother still lives in Mexico, he learns. She used to visit during summer vacations, but hasn't been back in years. Her mother wants to bring her grandmother up to California, but she refuses. They end up talking for hours. Eli silences his phone, not thinking about the schemes he's set up that are paying for the privilege to sit in this campus coffeeshop. Jade's hair falls into her face when she leans over her coffee cup, and he wants to reach across the table and tuck it behind her ears. She tells him that he father died when she was nine, and he nods and tells her that he only has two real memories of his mother before she died. For the first time in his life, he starts imagining a future with someone.

Nevertheless, he reveals himself cautiously to Jade, ready for the rejection at every turn, but it never comes. The jail time, the gang background, Jade tells him what matters is the person he is now, not what he has done in the past. He doesn't explain how he's paying for the class, though. But he promises himself once he saves enough to seed his own shop, he'll be done for good. They don't really go on dates, save for their weekly study session that never seems to result in studying, but it doesn't matter. They get married in less than a year, after Rita reluctantly comes around, in a simple backyard ceremony. Jade takes a job with a day care, just as he's able to purchase a run-down garage on a busy, verging-on-middle-class street, and before they can process any of it, Jade is pregnant with Valentina.

* * *

2019

Valentina changed his life. She's still changing his life. Nine years old with a deep sense of compassion and a healthy love of toy cars. He tries to spend as much time as possible with her, even though him and Jade are officially separated now. Even after everything that happened, with the attack and the trial and losing his business, the only thing he still truly believes in is Valentina. He sends money to them, and Jade asks if the money is clean and he hates that he evades her question. Or does he? What's worse? That he spends all day chopping cars, or that people like him are getting gunned down by people like Celeste. Some days he feels lucky that all the cops did was plant a fake gun on him.

Other days he feels like he's forever paying for the mistakes of his past. He's been thinking a lot about his rise in the PCH lately. He sees Fennel in the grocery store one day, with his beautiful wife and son, and he thinks about taping him to the flagpole junior year. Eli has no defense for that one. For every crime he feels is justified, there are stupid teenage decisions he deeply regrets. He still sees Thumper's cousin around and he thinks about how this town is filled with ghosts. Maybe he should be harder on the PCH kids who hang out at his shop. That would be the logical thing to do, try to stop them from taking the path he took. Instead he finds himself giving them all second chances. Even the stupid ones, the ones he knows he can't save. He tries any way.

That's what Veronica doesn't understand. Juan Diego is him, and he's Felix and he's everyone who's ever made stupid decisions, and he's everyone who never really had a good choice in the first place. Is that really how Veronica sees him? A bargaining chip, a tool, a way to certify her outsider status? Because god, at one point, it felt like Veronica was the only one who believed in him. After graduation, when his family wouldn't talk to him, as if he, himself, killed Letty. It's not like he planned to get arrested at graduation in front of his grandma and the kids. But if the stress of his arrest didn't kill her, it certainly helped. He had been so mad when Veronica transferred to Stanford. They were just getting to be friends, and she up and left without so much as a phone call. After all she had done for him, getting him the Hearst job, and being pretty much his only friend that long, lonely year just out of high school. Maybe he should've tried calling her, but if she didn't think he was worth telling that she was leaving, did he even want to? He doesn't know how to reconcile it. The very real ways in which Veronica probably saved his life, and the very real suspicion that she only cared enough to benefit herself. There's a history between them he respects, and he'll always respect. But he doesn't know if there is a future.

As much as he wants to fight it, though, Eli maintains a spark of hope. It's why he can't fault Jade for leaving, and in equal measure can't put away his bike when there are so many counting on him. He has to, to believe that there is something worth living in the world his daughter is growing into. Something about Veronica, and this whole damn town, just keeps pulling him back, despite himself.

~~fin~~

A/N: This was a challenge to write for a few reasons. It was hard to strike a balance between adequately addressing the stuff that has gone on in Eli's life, and not making this fic a maudlin angst-fest. Also, I just couldn't write Eli as someone who leaves his wife and kid without truly believing it was the only way to make things work. He grew up, presumably, without a father-figure, and it just does not make sense he would do that to his daughter without doing what seemed to be the best for her. At the same time, I knew I didn't want to write it as Jade leaving him, and having no contact with her or Valentina because that's just too damn sad and he's already been through enough! Similarly, I didn't want to Jade to be either too passive, or too not-understanding of Eli's circumstances. I also wanted to respect Veronica and Weevil's past while still taking a critical look at their recent interactions which to me, while sad and extremely cold, are not necessarily out of character for Veronica. I tried to be as faithful to all the canon as possible, including the books.

The timeline is pretty wonky, but based on all the mentions in the the newer canon, I decided that Eli worked at Hearst until 2008, got arrested for the last time in early 2009, met Jade summer 2009 and got married rather quickly. Valentina was born late 2010, just after he opened his shop. The reunion takes place January 2014 (which only makes it 8 years but this timeline is so weird it's the only way that worked). The events of MKAT take place in summer 2014. The new show, and his yelling match with Veronica, take place in 2019. I was hesitant to add the date headings in the fic, but ultimately I thought it was too confusing without, and the more I fiddled with the tense the more confusing it got.

Anyways, tell me what you think. Talk to me endlessly about Weevil's character arc. Say hi on tumblr: feeisamarshmallow. Anything is appreciated.


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